Deals worth $350m signed at 16th Textile Asia

LAHORE - Besides marking the participation of over 500 foreign delegates, the three-day 16th International TextileAsia Exhibition, organised jointly by PRGMEA and Ecommerce Gateway, booked the orders of $160 million on first day while deals of more than $350 million were signed throughout the mega textile fair.

The Pakistan Readymade Garments Manufacturers & Exporters Association and Ecommerce Gateway Pakistan have also signed the agreement to continue to jointly conduct this mega textile event for the next five consecutive years in Lahore.

PRGMEA senior vice chairman Sohail A Sheikh announced this at the concluding ceremony of the exhibition on the last day of the TextileAsia Exhibition here on Monday.

Sohail Sheikh said that around 50,000 people visited the exhibition during first two days, while more than 100,000 visitors registered their presence in the textile fair in three days.

He said that machinery and equipments displayed at the exhibition were of immense utility to manufacturers producing value added products for increasing volume of exports. He hoped that local businessmen would benefit from this technology by adding value to their products.

He said that TextileAsia Expo also featured businessmen to businessmen (B2B) meetings, a lot of important industry-related presentations and seminars on textile sector.

After the amazing response and winning huge success, the PRGMEA and Ecommerce Gateway Pakistan reiterated their commitment of continuing to conduct the International TextileAsia Exhibition every year in August at Expo Centre Lahore for at least next five years," he added.

Addressing the MoU signing ceremony, PRGMEA chief coordinator Ijaz Khokhar also announced that this year show was dominant by mainly Chinese companies but next year we would focus mainly on the companies from Germany and the Europe to showcase their brands in TextileAsia Exhibition in Lahore.

He said that this textile machinery fair in Pakistan would increase productivity, resulting into better competitiveness. The exhibition, he said, is aimed at focusing the Punjab potential of textile and garment machinery, accessories, raw material supplies, chemicals and allied services under one roof, as around 80 percent of textile industry is located in this province. The exhibition also provided an effective platform for joint ventures and collaborations to the textile sector's SMEs.

Dr Khurshid Nizam, the CEO of Ecommerce Gateway Pakistan, observed that the 3-day mega fair provided the local small textile industry a best opportunity where more than 315 international brands from around 27 countries displayed their products in more than 515 stalls.

Dr Khurshid Nizam said that International Textile & Garment Machinery Show is 100 percent Pakistani brand and the only UFI approved event of the industry in South Asia , which provides enormous opportunities of learning, information sharing, mutual cooperation and combined projects to all the stakeholders in textile sector in whole South Asia .